krtkush

> They still have access to the transaction data, right? So they can build financial profiles on their users, as well as communications profiles (even if only metadata is available) since they dominate that market at well. Seems like a gold mine for intelligence operations.

Definitely. That's what they're all in for.

> Are there laws mandating that the data has to stay on Indian servers and be insulated from the outside?

GOI have started enforcing these requirements but I'm not sure where exactly the situation is right now.

> Or maybe government/public sector employees can’t use these foreign services (seems unlikely)?

Only recently these things have picked up and are considered a serious threat to the nation's security and sovereignty. The defense forces are more serious about it right now but maybe with time it'll change for other government employees too.

Even on iOS devices?

> Also, given that India semi-recently blocked some entertainment apps on national security grounds (let's assume the stated intent for the sake of the argument), I wonder if anyone in the Indian government is alarmed that U.S. megacorps hold IMO much more precious keys to the financial security of their 1.4B population?

Most of these payment systems are just a wrapper around GOI's UPI (which is one of the best things to come out of India in the past decade)[1]. The money remains in banks throughout the transaction. Additionally, very little of people's money is stored in digital wallets and that too for a short period of time (anecdotal). However, yes it should be a cause of concern for any country when foreign firms are tightly involved in its economic sector, and we cannot discount interventions on basis of internal security and geopolitical situations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

Won't you want to destroy the nest once the vacuuming is done?

I use DDG and more often than not it is satisfactory. About 80% of my searches are via DDG and for the rest I have to use !g[1].

I usually end up adding "reddit" to my search terms to avoid crap results on both Google and DDG.

[1]I was very curious about my DDG vs !g searches and ended up making an extension for FF which measures just that - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ddg-stats/

> I would definitely stay away from any "Sign in with Apple".

I would stay away from any "Sign in with.." service as a user and as a product owner. You're affectively giving away a major control of your users to a third party.

> Toyota recently pulled out of the country

That is incorrect. Toyota is halting expansion in India not pulling out.

As an Indian I have never heard of own urine being used to clear nasal passage. It has always been salt water or plain water.

Could you please provide some source?

> There’s a rudimentary heater, and if the idea of letting a 14-year-old loose on it seems unnerving, Krygier points out that unlike with a scooter – the most likely alternative for many of the Ami’s younger potential customers – you get the stability of four wheels on a proper chassis, and are safely enclosed in a solid tubular steel frame.

But it's not only about the passenger, is it? It is also about the pedestrian. A cube might be safer for a kid but the same cube going 45 kmph driven by an unlicensed person can be lethal to others.

But what if there are only 2 theme parks in the world and ride makers have no option but to comply with whatever rules these 2 theme parks come up with?

That's true for even a casual website user. They have no idea or care about the underlying database.

Every app developer is aware about SQLite.

The thing is one does not know if they'll come or not. That is not the point. There is a general fear amongst the people that they'll be targeted for speaking out. Effectively blocking freedom of speech.

I keep all my secure codes in my password manager.

All this is leading me to have a stronger belief in Nassim Taleb's "The Most Intolerant Wins" theory[1]. Though, in this case there is no minority as such. China was intolerant to the US's ideology and exploited its openness for its own benefit. Now, unfortunately, it has come to a point where even US has to be intolerant like China to be able to get back at it. Thoughts?

[1] https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...

Only waiting to realize.

I don't think so, unfortunately.

In my case, I do own the domain name.

Because I mentioned GitHub? The thing is GitHub is just a wrapper. All my data is still with me and I can switch to GitLab in about a hours time. Also, unlike Medium, GitHub does not put a quota on number of free articles per month nor does it cover 1/4th of the page with a permanent pop-up asking the reader to sign up.

I feel GitHub pages and Medium are not the same thing.

The number of large (and hip) software companies which host their blogs on medium is mind boggling. With the amount of time they spend reinventing the wheels, one would think they would spend some time setting up their own blog.

Also, why do people host their tech tutorials on Medium? I have few of my own and always put them up on my own github pages blog. It's not too difficult.

Delightfully, My RSS feed has no such problem.

Excellent app.

I implemented the update notification for the GitHub APKs few years back.

Given how protective Apple is about the experience of apps on the App Store and this happening the second time, I'm surprised they have not come up with a way to prevent this from happening. Also, a monolithic SDK should not exist in this day and age.

Yep! This is how it works in India. Very basic test - drive round a block, reverse and do an L parking without hitting the tires. That was it in my case (2016)

The silver lining is that it was worse before. People literary did not have to go to the authorities to get their licenses; just pay a middle man some money you'll have your license in your hands in the comfort of your homes. So yaay!(?)

While there are no first party Kindle integrations, I find p2k.co perfect for my use case, i.e. push pocket articles to my Kindle.

[Shameless plug] For anyone who uses DuckDuckGo but finds themselves using !g too and is curious how much their DDG vs !g search distribution is - I have made a small FOSS add-on for Firefox called DDG Stats[1].

I am planning on a Chrome port too (though, I would always recommend Firefox over chrome).

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ddg-stats/

This is so frustrating and rage inducing!

I enjoy reading blogs like gwern and SSC. The fact that the blog has just gone away because somebody threatened to doxx the author against his will is sad and a loss to the community.

Scott, on Reddit[1], has mentioned that there is a possibility for the blog to come back but it all depends on how things pan out in the next few months. So I hope NYT just dumps the story, apologises and reevaluate their ethics.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...

> What I am doing - starting with Upanishads (aka Vedanta, literally the end part of Vedas, where you get the gist), there are 10 major ones which come with commentary by Adi Shankaracharya. Remaining are not minor in the sense of importance, just that you get to them once you grasp the major ones first as they come without the authoritative commentary. They are overall philosophical in nature.

Next come the Puranas. Again there are about 8-10 of these. These contain most of the stories or the 'mythology' which we heard in our childhood and read in the books.

Could you please point to the resources and translations you are using?

This is exactly how I separated myself from facebook while I straight up deleted my carefully curated instagram account. But I continue to be addicted to reddit and it is even harder to let go off because I actually find meaningful stuff on it.

There goes my side business idea.

All this will be AI powered, I assume?